The Ferryboat Inn, Tottenham Hale

We set out for the third year running to the Ferry Boat Inn for our New Years Day lunch, along with a few drinks. Not being a pub crawler type it literally has been a year since we last visited.

You can probably imagine that since we've been going back for 3 consecutive years that we liked it; general atmosphere, drinks, food and of course speed of service and temperament of service.

Well, I think it's fair to say that New Years day 2010 will not be spent in the Ferry Boat Inn.

Walking in felt immediately unlike previous years, though it was not until the main course arrived at least an hour after ordering that I realised something fundamental was wrong - it dawned on me that there must have been a change of management in between last years visit and New Years Day 2009.

So what was the problem?

Well there are many; the staff are unfriendly, monosyllabic and appear not to care, nor do they equate timing with the concept of 'service'. The Chef is errant at least in mind as far as I can tell - it's simply not possible that a real chef actually cooked the food.

Starter was reasonable enough, though it was all bought in goods; cheese, chorizo, prawns, salmon, lettuce, bread, butter and chutney assembled on a plate. The assembly time for this was nearly an hour from order to arrival at the table.

After finishing our long awaited starters the waitress serving us swiped the empty plates from the table and grunted 'Got mains' (meaning did you also order main courses and by the way was your starter as enjoyable as we hope it was?)

I felt like saying 'Yeah, gas, electricity and water'.

The 'Chef' clearly hasn't stayed on during the management takeover. When I 'got main', which was supposed to be the 'Chef's Turkey Dinner Special of the Day' I found it was anything but special - I genuinely regularly cook better roast dinners myself.

Mine was billed as Roast Turkey with a selection of seasonal vegetables, roast potatoes, honey roasted parsnips and a 'pig in a jacket'.

What I got was 2 slices of Bernard Matthews turkey breast, shredded boiled cabbage (that my partner insisted was boiled lettuce - since that was what it looked like and there were no taste clues to confirm its identity either way) and baby carrots that were not trimmed (nor washed as far as I could tell), 3 very soft and greasy roasted potatoes and 3 apparently roasted parsnips that were literally so hard I was hurting my wrist trying to exert adequate pressure using the cutlery supplied to cut through them (Note to management - next time please provide power cutting tool to customer for this activity). The pig in the jacket consisted of a pig (wrinkled sausage) with a jacket (greasy rasher of bacon) both placed alongside one another - so the pig didn't even get to wear his jacket on his last day - and such a cold day at that. Poor pig.

All in all a very undignified 'Roast Turkey Special'.

Puddings OK, drinks from the tap so also OK.

This place really needs to raise its game if it seriously wants to at least uphold the standards of the previous owner(s).

If Ramsey was doing one of his visits he'd be going balistic. 2.5/10 for all round experience or lack thereof.

1 Jan 2009 19:23